Making outhouses appropriate for storage

[ultiali]

Hi All,

I live in a basement flat which has a seperate entrance to the rest of the building. Outside our front door there are three small outhouses that extend out underneath the pavement. Two of them are 3x2x2 (m) and the other 1.5x2x2. I'm assuming that at one point they were coal sheds. They each have wooden doors. At the moment we are using them to store bikes

At the very least I need to do some repairs on the doors. The hinges are incredibly rusty, but I was wondering what it would take to make them sufficiently waterproof to store more than outdoor stuff.

The doors aren't a uniform size so I'd prefer the solution to be something I could add to the doors rather than new doors, as I expect that new doors would be very expensive. The insides of the outhouses appear just to be whitewashed brick.

Thanks

A

p.s. I do of course need to check out if I'm allowed to do all of this!

 

[Burnerman]

If the hinges are in poor condition, expect to replace the door frames together with the doors themselves...cladding stuff on top of rotten material is a waste of time.
Not as expensive as you may think, depending on how your skills are and how much space you have.....for odd ball sizes I make the doors from 22mm tongue and groove pine, glued, battened and braced from the inside. With a loan of 3 sash cramps and a flat floor you can do this.
The frames are easily made from 100mm x 50mm PSE timber and fixed to the existing brickwork with frame fasteners.
John

 

[JohnD]

the sort of storage bay you describe is bound to be damp. Give it plenty of ventilation. you will not be able to store anything damp-susceptible in there unless it is in a plastic crate with tight lid.

 

[foxhole]

They will never be suitable, not even for bikes which like the hinges will quickly go rusty.